So today I’m going to tell you the story of How I Ended Up with my Face On a McDonald’s Advert in China – A Cautionary Tale. Six or so years ago, a friend in Canada posted a pic on my FB wall to say she found an advert of me promoting immigration in a Canadian newspaper. pic.twitter.com/QJ0nWpYNmQ

I can also take on new identities. The most shocking of these are adverts to teach & care for kids – so who is actually with the kids? When I asked the photographer abt this, he says I signed away rights to ‘distortion of character including false names’. pic.twitter.com/2MzIZPAfi5

“The testimonials are the most shocking for me,” she says. “I thought I understood how stock images work, you know, like having a picture of a house to illustrate a house.

“But it was so dishonest, I never knew you could use stock images with false testimonials and fake names.”

The ones that bothered her the most were where her blemishes were edited out for an after-photo promoting a beauty product and when her name was changed with a fake history of post-pregnancy melasma.

By 2013, it was getting too much so she contacted the photographer again to appeal for his help.

“I actually had to work up the courage to ask him because I thought he’d say no,” she recalls of the exchange. “I said I knew we signed this thing, but I didn’t realise that my photo would go like that.

“He explained he was sorry I felt hard done by but it was all legal and explained to us beforehand,” Shubnum tweeted. “But he agreed to take it down from his site since I complained as an author I could be recognised.”

Shubnum is adamant she was never told that the photographs taken when she was a university student would be used as stock images.

She adds: “No-one told me that it would be a stock image, no-one told me my name would be distorted. If someone had told me that, I wouldn’t have signed it.”